From August 2014 until January 2015, Guardians of the Galaxy was the highest grossing domestic film of 2014. In November 2014, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 was released and by late January 2015, it overtook the Marvel film. Then, in December 2014, Warner Bros. opened American Sniper. The first few weekends were above average for limited release numbers but then it opened wide and grossed a staggering $93 million over three days. Since then Clint Eastwood’s film has remained right near the top of the box office every single week. This weekend, it finally surpassed The Hunger Games, making American Sniper the highest grossing domestic film of 2014. Read More »

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While movie theater attendance was down in 2014 (over 50% cite high prices as the reason), MovieTickets.com is reporting that movie ticket sales for January 2015 is up 37% over January 2014. Whats the reason for the uptick in movie ticket purchases? Find out after the jump.Read More »

The first comments I heard from people about Clint Eastwood‘s American Sniper, after the film’s premiere at AFI Fest in Los Angeles last fall, were about the baby. If you’ve seen the film, you’ve noticed the baby. If you haven’t seen the film you’ve probably still heard people talking about it. During a scene in which Chris Kyle is at home, Bradley Cooper has to hold a very obviously plastic baby for over a minute. Sure, joke about the scene being the one to lock Cooper’s latest Best Actor Oscar nomination, but for real, why the plastic baby?

Turns out there’s no grand concept behind using a prop rather than a real baby for the scene — it was a purely practical decision. Read More »

Long before American Sniper was nominated for six Oscars or grossed $100 million on its opening weekend, it was almost a very different movie. In the summer of 2013, Steven Spielberg was attached to direct the film based on the memoir of U.S. sniper Chris Kyle. Bradley Cooper was still attached to star and produce. However, after a few months of development, Spielberg dropped off the project. Director Clint Eastwoodquickly jumped on and history was made.

So what was different about Steven Spielberg’s version of American Sniper? In a behind the scenes story about the movie, screenwriter Jason Dean Hall revealed some of the suggestions Spielberg made about the script and how they forced Warner Bros. to move in another direction. Read the Steven Spielberg American Sniper quotes below. Read More »

Going into the weekend, Clint Eastwood‘s American Sniper was expected to handily dominate at the box office. Experts were predicting huge numbers for the film, maybe even north of $70 million. But when the smoke cleared Monday and final estimates came in, the film will have grossed a staggering, record-setting $105.3 million from Friday to Monday ($90.2 over the three day). The previous January champion, Ride Along, grossed only $48.6 million over its first four days. Sniper had doubled it and then some.

In Los Angeles, a city where the film had already been opened for three weeks, there were lines around the block. With a number that big, that was probably the case in almost every other city too. So how did American Sniper do so incredibly well? Read more about the American Sniper opening weekend below. Read More »

Editor’s Note: This review originally ran on November 12. We’re bumping it up now that American Sniper is in wide release.

Director Clint Eastwood has great aspirations for American Sniper. First and foremost, he hopes to make a movie paying tribute to the most deadly sniper in the history of the United States. That’s the late Chris Kyle, played by Bradley Cooper. He also hopes to show Kyle not as only a heroic solider, but a complex man confident in his actions and concerned about of their results. The film paints a grim picture of post-traumatic stress disorder and what it does to our veterans, especially in regards to their families. Finally, there’s also a drive to keep things exciting, so there are many gun battles in the deserts of Iraq.

Yes, American Sniper is an incredibly ambitious film with many moving parts. All of those parts work in certain instances, but only on rare occasions do they all come together at once. The disconnection makes the film fall just short of those great aspirations.

American Sniper had its World Premiere on Veterans Day at AFI Fest presented by Audi and you can read the rest of our review below. Read More »

The Director’s Guild of America released its nominations today for awards that will recognize achievement in feature film directing from 2014. The list features two biopics, The Imitation Game and American Sniper, and one film, Boyhood, that was made under circumstances that all but turn it into a biopic of its cast and director, Richard Linklater. But the biopic love ends there, and the DGA has no nomination to spare for Ava DuVernay and Selma. The full 2015 DGA nominations list is below. Read More »

Clint Eastwood‘s American Sniper has been racking up box office dollars and picking up awards nominations, and now it’s getting the IMAX treatment. The company has announced an American Sniper IMAX run to kick off later this month.

Bradley Cooper leads the drama as U.S. Navy SEAL Chris Kyle, called the most lethal sniper in American military history. Hit the jump for more details on the American Sniper IMAX release. Read More »